


the steelmaking method

by agivise



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Unreliable Narrator, and it's s o f u n t o w r i t e, look folks, oh god no it's two character studies in one, warren is just very bad at being a human being
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-08-04 08:09:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16343072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agivise/pseuds/agivise
Summary: at the end of the day, an iron fence keeps the bad things out just as good a solid stone one, and an iron pipe severs a spinal cord just as nice as a carbon fiber ice axe if you swing it hard enough.mister daniel kenneth jacobi, when you first run across his name in that file, is a damn fine specimen of iron.





	the steelmaking method

**Author's Note:**

> buckle in folks this is a long one  
> and hey look i'm only one story away from going into a second page of works niiiice
> 
> today's song recs: she can't leave me here alone tonight by homeshake and moon dust by cherry glazerr

here’s what they don’t tell you about making monsters:

they snap,

so very easily.

iron is a soft metal. that’s an easily forgotten fact. hell, it scratches worse than glass does. but it’s a raw thing — malleable, so malleable, and so useful because of it. it bends under pressure, rusts if it sits idle for too long, and sure, it can’t hold up a building too well, but at the end of the day, an iron fence keeps the bad things out just as good a solid stone one, and an iron pipe severs a spinal cord just as nice as a carbon fiber ice axe if you swing it hard enough.

it is also remarkably easy to transform into steel. just toss it in a blast furnace with some carbon and wait. trial by fire gives thick skin.

your hiring process may or may not have been inspired by the steelmaking method.

mister daniel kenneth jacobi, when you first run across his name in that file, is a damn fine specimen of iron. you find his file hidden among goddard’s tower of impurities, the stack of almost-desirables with too many flaws to be reliably worth the company’s time. it mostly exists to keep track of all the people who could be dangerous to goddard’s goals if they get any smart ideas. it _also_ exists because you’re quite fond if it, and if anyone tried to get rid of these files, you’d _very calmly_ take them aside and _very calmly_ have a word with them and _very calmly_ suggest that if anything happened to these documents, _someone_ would wake up in a storm drain missing their fingertips and half their frontal lobe, and that person would not be you.

this little reject pile is quickly becoming your favorite collection in the whole damn world. this is the place where you found klein and katz and imes, who, while not great fits for _your_ work, per se, are shaping up to be three fine folks, from the looks of rachel’s scouting. knowing her, she might even take one of ‘em under her wing.

(and, with the sorts of things that have most certainly ended up scrawled in _your_ file over the years — times square incident included — there’s little doubt in your mind that _you_ were in the pile too, at one point, before cutter decided that you were more useful on his leash than off of it.)

it’s your lunch hour. you set your mug of coffee down on the counter and begin to look through the stack again. it’s your monday ritual.

maria ritz, 46; salt lake city, utah; disgraced ortho surgeon, license revoked after one too many malpractice lawsuits, contrary to a history of brilliant work; flagged for possible use in prosthetics development; ultimately deemed too unstable to be hired. uninteresting. not of use to you.

slater stern, 19; bennington, vermont; prodigy microarchitecture scientist with a rebellious streak and quite the petty legal record; flagged for, you guessed it, the microarchitecture team; avoided due to a mismatch in... personality type. you push the file aside. you’d rather not hire some obnoxious punk teen with a deathwish. you already have enough of a god complex to go around.

douglas eiffel, 28; austin, texas; jack of all trades tech-boy with a drinking problem and some short stints in paramilitary and private security — a man after your own heart. you’ve had his file bookmarked for a while. unfortunately, so has cutter. and since you lack the willpower to start a catfight over who gets the guy, (and the legal connections to get the fucker out of jail without cutter’s direct help,) you sigh and move on to the next file.

lee sage, 63; victoria, canada; biological agents developer, which in your line of work, is just a fancy phrase for ‘bioterrorist’. already employed by a competitor. not a fun chase. boring. next.

daniel jacobi, 28; san francisco, california; orbital ballistics expert ousted from air force paramilitary work nearly two years ago to the day, after an accident killed two coworkers.

 _hmm._ he’s _new._ you like new.

 _lllet's see,_ now. clever boy. poor eyesight. mit grad. daddy issues. attitude issues. addiction issues. a whooole lot of issues. like soft clay in your hands. he should be fun.

you take a look at one of his old student id pictures.

he’s — cute. he’s cute.

the photo goes back in the file, and the file stays clutched in your hands.

ten minutes later, you photocopy the first few pages, toss them onto cutter’s desk, and say, “i’m taking a trip.”

he raises his brows, smiles, and says, “you have one week.”

you frown. “sir, it usually takes _months_ to decide if —”

“you’re right,” he says, silencing you instantly with the chill in his voice. “it takes months to scout, to decipher, to _decide._ but you’ve already decided, haven’t you, warren? the week isn’t for research. the week is to _get_ him. it’s not a vacation.”

you stand in thoughtful silence for a moment.

“if you give me the time off from other assignments, i’ll only need three days,” you settle on.

he smirks. “confident, are we?”

you force a prim smile in response. “no. only… driven.”

“you like him.” it’s not a question.

“i want him,” you correct, brushing over the double meaning without a second thought.

he looks back at the file.

“i don’t like him,” he says stiffly.

“you don’t need to.”

cutter folds his hands and looks you in the eye. “fine. three days. your time starts now.”

four hours after that, you’re on a plane to san francisco, memorizing the file word to word, cover to cover.

———

by 18:00, you’ve grabbed your rental and dropped your bags off in your hotel room. his listed address is a shitty concrete slab of an apartment a mile and a half down the road from you. he’s too broke for a car in this nightmarishly expensive hell city, you decide, so it’s tough to say if he’s home or not, but the lights are out, so you doubt it. you park half a block down, put your feet up on the dash, and wait.

he — or, at least, a guy you can pretty safely assume is him, given the exhausted, tipsy stagger — comes home around 2:00. you’ve gotten through a shakespeare play and a half — the short ones, sure, but still. the bastard’s making you wait. you can’t even approach him yet, not now, not until he’s out in public again, which you hope to hell is within your rapidly decreasing three day time limit. but, hey, at least he came home alone. company is always a tremendous inconvenience.

you allow yourself a nice long catnap in the back of the car, grab coffee from down the block, and sit back down to wait. it doesn’t take him long to leave again. it’s barely past noon, actually, so you don’t even have to head back to your hotel and start a second stakeout. hair of the dog, apparently, or maybe he’s just a habitual day-drinker. actually, given his record — definitely that last one.

you trail him two blocks down to a shitty, unbusy, remarkably tiny bar, which seems to only be open for people of his exact nature. you sit outside and wait for him to get himself pretty wasted before you even step in the door.

he’s desperate, you remind yourself. sad and broke and day-drunk and oh, so desperate. this isn’t a tough sell. don’t spend too long striking up a conversation, don’t strike up any fanfare, don’t start shit, don’t get too friendly. just tell him your name, make him trust you, and leave him a card.

it’s the two year anniversary of the date in the file, you notice. damn. you wish you were clever enough for that to have been intentional. it’s the perfect way in.

you let him wallow in liquor for an hour and a half before following him in. he’s seated crooked at the bar, head buried in one pitiful hand with the other clasped around an empty glass, a rapidly melting ice cube sitting at the bottom. he’s snarking the bartender about “icy booze” with a disproportionately pissed-off look on his face. he’s also very, very hot.

“that’s the spirit,” you voice, tone slow and slick. “don't let that wuss say you can't hold your liquor.”

he ignores you, and then he snaps at you, and, shocking even you, you don’t even _consider_ kicking his ass for it. shoving your tongue down his throat, maybe, but you settle on a happy medium and buy him a very, very expensive drink, with a very, very gentle smile.

 _don’t fucking flirt with him,_ the little voice in your head says, and then you flirt with him _a lot._

you ask his name, and he doesn’t say _jacobi,_ he says _daniel_ — _daniel,_ and the name tastes like sugar as it rolls off your tongue.

 _daniel, daniel, daniel._ you could say it for ages.

you quote king lear at him, and he has _no_ _fucking idea_ what you’re talking about.

fuck

he’s _perfect_

“i’m really good at making things that break other things,” he tells you eventually, and you’re suddenly so certain that you _need_. need _him._ need him _near you._ perfect iron, you think. perfect iron boy. you can’t _wait_ to see the damage he can do.

(sweet boy. polite boy. he calls you _sir._

you’re going to _ruin_ him.

you monster.)

 _just leave your goddard business card and go_ , the little voice pleads after a few more minutes of too-close conversation, and you do, but you’d be lying if you said it wasn’t absolutely killing you to be leaving the bar without him.

you savor calling him _daniel_ one last time, and vow to never, ever call him that again.

you’re already back in your hotel room by the time you realize you didn’t even give him your name.

———

for the first time in years, you have two days with absolutely nothing to do. no work to complete, no wounds to let heal. you have… two days off. and you have absolutely no idea what you’re gonna do with them.

you consider finding some brown-eyed dark-haired pretty stranger to pick up, take home, but something about the idea just makes your chest ache unpleasantly.

so you spend most of the days sleeping, and most of the nights parked outside his place,

and when he comes home alone both nights, no stranger in tow, some nasty, ruined, unplaceable corner of your heart is _delighted._

———

just before you hop onto your plane back, rachel calls up and tells you that your new pet project has an “interview” scheduled for, oh, would you look at that, you’re busy that day. how… convenient. thank you, rachel.

you hope cutter doesn’t scare him too badly. that’s _your_ job, after all.

———

you finally get your chance on your first job with him.

you wish it was all staged. _fuck,_ you would have really liked for this one to have not been real, just one of your bullshit manipulations, something to laugh off the second it’s all over. but it does definitely happen.

by ‘ _it’,_ of course, you mean locking yourself in a room with an armed bomb and a panicking stranger.

and look,

you could lie and say there are no dark thoughts behind this decision,

but hey,

he _has_ to be the right choice.

he _has_ to be the one.

you chose him, and you’re never wrong. (and if you can’t have him, no one can.)

“ _take that thing apart, quick as you like”_

and he _does_

and he does, and he’s perfect, and just like that, you’re a _god_ to him. you almost kill the two of you to prove a goddamn point, and he _worships_ you for it.

half an hour later this sweet boy, polite boy, tells you to go to fucking hell, and you grab him by the collar, and you shove him into the wall, and he _smiles._ smiles like he’s daring you to hit him or worse (or better).

you step away from him like you’ve been burned. he steals your chair and kicks his feet up on your desk.

you push him to the fucking floor and make him do your paperwork for the rest of the week.

you hate his bastard guts.

(he’s better than you ever could have dreamed.)

———

but, here’s the thing about steel —

too much pressure, and it doesn’t bend,

it _snaps._

shatters like porcelain. the harder it is, the more brittle it gets. strike it too sudden and it crumbles same as ash.

(the furnace looks you dead in the eye, and you blink first.)

——

the first time he gets hurt, he gets hurt _bad._

it’s a warm day. muggy, even, though it often is in lecce.

today’s task? find the sanctimonious wealthy businessman’s ridiculously large cell phone in the sanctimonious wealthy businessman’s ridiculously large villa, and bug it. needle in a fucking haystack, sure, but finding the needle is easy as pie if you remember to bring a magnet. or, in this case, a gun.

jacobi lags just a bit too far off to your right, and your attention drifts for just a bit too long, which, in your life, is a recipe for overwhelming, all-consuming disaster.

the guy’s got a knife to jacobi’s carotid before you can so much as flinch.

“lascia cadere la pistola, e _forrrrse_ lui vive,” the businessman says. he draws a nice, fresh lick of blood from jacobi’s throat onto his blade, an unpleasant frown pasted across his lips.

 _“così generoso,”_ you spit out as sarcastically as you can manage, but you do drop the gun. the one in your hand, at least, but if he wanted you to drop them _all,_ he really should’ve specified, shouldn’t he have? how unfortunate for him.

you put on your serious voice and talk it out for as long as it takes for him to fuck up, which feels like a goddamn eternity whenever you see the pained, wide-eyed look on jacobi’s face, though you’d bet that in reality it’s only been a minute or two. but he does slip up, soon enough. he shifts the knife towards jacobi’s heart instead, giving you just enough time to put two quick bullets into his skull before he can fully react. cutter’ll be pissed. damn.

in the span of a half second, you watch jacobi stagger away from the now-corpse,

and as he does,

he _screams_.

he just screams, and screams, and collapses in on himself, and as he falls, his volume drops so sudden, like there just ain’t enough air in his lungs to scream anymore. you see him grasp raggedly at his stomach, and before you can get close enough to stop him — before you can stop him he just, he rips the knife out of his gut and he looks up at you, he just looks up at you, just _pleading,_ just _horrible._

the experience of seeing this happen to him is akin to someone injecting ice-cold antifreeze directly into your aorta. which is, put simply, very bad. you’re doing very bad.

admittedly, though, he definitely feels worse than you do right now.

“oh, you absolute _moron,”_ you groan, or at least you try to, but in all actuality you feel like you were just hit in the windpipe with an aluminum bat, so you mostly just bite your tongue and fish for your burner cell and leap down to put his hands over his wound.

you know, mostly from personal experience, that you’re _probably_ not supposed to see a man’s intestines outside of his body — well, _ever._ (unless your intent is for him to die painfully, in which case, _congratulations,_ kepler, you’re about fifteen minutes away from succeeding. this isn’t something you’ll be able to fix with a first aid kit and a motel bathroom.)

but you’ve gotten yourself stitched back together just fine from worse beginnings, so you take a shallow breath and call an ambulance on your burner and start researching some good blackmail material on the nearest hospital.

(there’s a hollow, unfamiliar ache in your chest every time you look at him, lying there in a blanket of red, but that feeling, it’s probably just anger. yeah. sure. that sounds about right. _anger._ )

“help me,” jacobi says quietly, as you stick your burner cell in the microwave for a minute or two. you carry him closer over to the street to keep the emts from seeing the man you killed, and you hide the body a little better, and you sigh. you just sigh.

you’re — you’re so fucking _angry_ with him.

———

 _“sono suo marito,”_ you lie, about fifteen seconds of stumbling over bullshit explanations away from giving up and just killing the nurse at the front desk so you can see him without all the fuss. she has some trouble understanding you because you absolutely _refuse_ to pronounce the smooth, clement sounds of italian with anything other than a dagger-sharp staccato — so strangely unlike your normal tone — but you get your point across just fine. you’re a damn fine actor when you need to be. _“in america, siamo sposati. lo amo. guiro.”_

she looks you over for a second, like she’s trying to catch you lying, but whatever she’s searching for, she doesn’t find it.

(which is pathetically stupid of her, because you’re… definitely lying. clearly. obviously. absolutely. you don’t — you aren’t — jacobi isn’t — )

“tre quarantaquattro. _he is — floor three._ non l'hai sentito da me,” she finally says, and your livid impatience melts away as you hit the elevator button without thanking her. you allowing her retain a pulse is a ‘thank you’ in itself.

———

and soon enough, he gets back up, and he brushes off the dust, and he’s fine. you tell him you’ll kill him yourself if he ever does something that stupid again. you move on. he doesn’t mention it. things are a-okay. life goes back to ‘normal’.

sure, that particular occasion prompts your inevitably long search for a third member to add to the team, but other than that, everything is exactly the same.

and that ache in your chest? not even there anymore. well, except when he talks back to you in that sugar-sweet fake-apathetic voice. and when he rest his head against your shoulder when you’re driving (which is _stupid,_ you’re fucking _driving,_ this is a _stick shift,_ he’s an _idiot)._ and also a whole hell of a lot, that one time you cut up your hand real bad and you take the opportunity to teach him how to suture — and he’s perfect at it, sure, but he just has that stupid pout on his face and he just keeps humming these stupid little tunes without realizing and apologizing over and over whenever his hand shakes and you _hate_ him for it and your heart _hurts._

so you stand farther back from him, don’t quite talk to him in the same tone anymore, stop letting him follow you around like a lost puppy. he seems to get the message. he hasn’t tried to drag you out for drinks in a long while, is what you’re saying, really.

it feels like he’s flickering, every once in a while.

but

other than that

y’know

_business as usual._

eventually, you pick out a promising new file. her name is alana maxwell. she’s… _not_ from the reject pile. she’s got the world at her fingertips, if she only wants it. in short, she’ll be _damn_ tough to convince. but if your scouting goes well, and you choose to take her under your wing. you have your ways of bringing people over to your side.

it’ll just take time.

you just wish that time didn’t feel like a death threat.

———

(you don’t miss him, because he’s not even gone, and that would be stupid.)

———

the sky is blood red.

the crackling of fireworks fills the air.

he’s got his arm slung ‘round your waist, and his whole voice goes soft as he repeats, _“i’m not complaining.”_

out in the night air, he melts into your side like he’s cold, but he’s clearly not fuckin’ cold — he’s warm, he’s always warm, he just… runs warm. but he does it anyways, and you have to fight to convince yourself not to push him off, before eventually relenting, letting him lean against you for a while while the last few explosions go off, leaving a gentle sort of heat in the sky.

he makes a hesitant move to get back into the passenger seat, but you stop him, put your hand on his wrist like you’re about to say something, make some comment, but you can’t seem to settle on the right words, so you just say _“daniel,”_ and bask in the silence and the look in his eyes.

surprising even yourself, you kiss him.

(surprising no one at all, he kisses you back.)  


**Author's Note:**

> as always, comments and kudos mean the literal world, bless your hearts


End file.
